a
zone of the city had been set aside to provide housing for the dead, a zone
that the law did not permit the living to visit, a law enforced by a strict
police cordon I made many attempts to penetrate, but the cops always turned me
away never even bothering to listen to the pretexts I invented to justify
making an exception for me brandishing their pistols warning that I would be
killed if I chose to defy their authority. . .slowly, it dawned upon me that
the best way of getting what I wanted would be an act of civil disobedience in
response to the threat since the police were either bluffing & they would
never open fire allowing me to enter the dead zone alive or they would shoot me
dead & the law would require that my corpse be housed in the dead zone
along with all the others who were dead like me. . .after I had decided to
engage in the practice of civil disobedience, the next time I went to the
checkpoint dividing the living from the dead, I refused to listen when the
police told me they would not let me enter the dead zone thru its gate &
ordered me to go back home & I responded instead by climbing the wall mounting
to its top before they opened fire with a fatal rain of bullets blowing so many
holes thru me I toppled over that wall & was dead upon arrival to the
ground of the zone I had longed to reach, a deliberate strategy employed by the
police to spare the city the expense of transporting my remains to the dead
zone so I could inhabit the area my new condition required me to inhabit in
accordance with strict civil law. . .

once
I had passed thru the death that was necessary so that I could at last become a
legal citizen of the dead zone, I was free to wander thru it intent upon
finding those I had once known & loved, those who had qualified to move
there long before me, but I did not have any street addresses to help me locate
them, so I relied upon random chance to establish the reunions desire had
ignited me to pursue. . .as I walked thru the streets of the dead, however, I
discovered, much to my dismay, that all the shadows I happened to encounter
looked exactly identical & I could not distinguish one from the other, a
discovery that plunged me into absolute despair after I found a mirror &
stared at my own reflection in it realizing that death had also stripped me of
any distinctive features others
could use to recognize me, a
realization that meant the reunions I wanted to experience had already been
experienced even though I failed to notice them. . .in my absolute despair, I
slumped down to the concrete certain that my suicide by police strategy had not
delivered the outcome I had expected, certain that the dead zone could never provide
me with the eternal bliss I had thought it would yield, but after I curled up
into a fetal ball & fell deep into a woebegone sleep, I escaped the woe
when an angel came to me in my dream & taught me to cultivate my love &
to wait patiently for the miracle that would surely come. . .

I
slept for so long an expanse of time that five years passed before I woke up, a
fact that I found difficult to believe but that was nevertheless confirmed by
the date I read on the first three newspapers I saw, five years that had not
been wasted since I spent them giving birth to a love that burned with a deeper
passion that I had ever known, a love that drove me to get up & to continue
my interrupted search vowing I would never surrender to despair again but instead
would look until I recognized & embraced all those I had come to recognize
& embrace. . .quickly, I discovered that the cultivation of my love
transfigured the shadows of the dead I encountered so that they became living
souls with faces, faces that made recognition possible, & that random
chance quickly led me to gather the souls I had wanted to find together, the
souls whose absence had inspired me to commit the act of civil disobedience
that would cause the police to kill me, a murder that had served as the door
bring me at last to the sweet reunion I desired. . .in the end, then, I had
passed thru death & received all the love that death once had seemed to
thwart, a miraculous fact I knew could not be denied when all our living souls
had gathered & we began our endless dance thru the streets of the dead, a
luminous dance that transfigured the dead zone thriving alive, sudden &
gigantic flowers blooming in response to each rhythmic step we took, flowers
towering far above our heads flooding the new world we had risen to inhabit
with a ravishing beauty that became the music born to ignite us to dance with
one another immersed in rapture & ecstasy forever & forever. . .